AFP - Myanmar has told its neighbours that democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi may be freed after the November 7 elections, according to a source at a summit where the junta is under fire over the discredited polls.
Myanmar Foreign Minister Nyan Win tackled the divisive issue with his regional counterparts during Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) talks in Hanoi Wednesday.
"He said they will release Aung San Suu Kyi maybe after the elections," said a foreign ministry official from one of the ASEAN delegations, who attended the dinner meeting.
However, Nyan Win "did not say specifically" what date Suu Kyi -- who has been in detention for 15 of the last 21 years -- would be freed from house arrest, the source told AFP.
Authorities in Myanmar have previously told AFP that the democracy icon will be released when her current term of house arrest expires on November 13, but the military state has made no official confirmation.
Western governments as well as UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon -- who holds talks Friday with ASEAN leaders -- have repeatedly said the vote will not be credible unless Suu Kyi and other opponents are set free.
Ban has expressed his growing "frustration" with the Myanmar junta in recent weeks and called on its neighbours to be more aggressive with its pariah neighbour or risk tarnishing their own democratic credentials.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who said Wednesday that he believed it was not too late to fix the "credibility deficit" undermining the elections, indicated the region was anticipating an imminent release.
"Our understanding is that once the present term of her sentence has expired, once she has served her sentence, then that would be it. And that notion was not disputed," he said Thursday.
"That was the understanding that we presented (to Nyan Win) and we did not hear any disputing of that understanding."
Neither Suu Kyi nor her National League for Democracy (NLD) party will participate in the vote, the country's first in two decades.
The junta, humiliated by its crashing defeat to the NLD in the 1990 polls, has prolonged Suu Kyi's confinement almost continuously ever since.
Uncertainty over whether the military regime will indeed release the 65-year-old, known reverently among Myanmar's people as "The Lady", will remain until the moment she appears in public.
Suu Kyi's current spell of detention stems from her imprisonment in May last year -- just days before a previous period of house arrest came to an end -- due to a bizarre incident in which an American swam to her lakeside home.
She was initially given three years in jail and hard labour but was returned to her crumbling family home in August 2009 after her sentence was commuted to one-and-a-half years' house arrest by junta leader Than Shwe.
Suu Kyi's lawyer Nyan Win has said the period of detention started with her imprisonment on May 14 and that authorities would have to release her in November because "there is no law to extend her house arrest".
Southeast Asian lawmakers have savaged the election plans and urged the region's leaders to refuse to recognise the flawed process and put it at the top of the agenda of ASEAN's summit Thursday.
The ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Myanmar Caucus said the elections were "cosmetic surgery to secure the military junta?s grip on power" and legitimise the generals' half-century rule.
But Natalegawa expressed optimism that the polls, followed by a reconciliation process, "may perhaps do the trick in terms of opening up and promoting democracy in Myanmar".
"It may be as important to recognise not only those participate in the elections, but also those who are not participating in the elections, like Aung San Suu Kyi and her supporters," he said.
"And our hope is that the political space will be sufficient, after the elections, that those who choose not participate in elections can still contribute to Myanmar's future."
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